I'm actually no terribly surprised that people would forget some of the albums they listen to less, considering how many albums the pillows have put out.

If you dug Stroll, you'll probably also enjoy Nook, btw, or at least in my opinion.

all the ooparts hate . its a decent album imo, and its got some post-90s greatest hits material on it for sure. the run thru the last five tracks is also one of my favourite stretches of tracks on a pillows album, more because of the flow rather than the quality of the songs.

I need more Lemon Drops in my life, you convinced me that I need to listen to OOparts today.

...I'll totally eventually try my hand at one of these lists, honest.

1. White Incarnation

2. Living Field
3. Thank You My Twilight
4. Kool Spice

5-16
. Good Dreams
. Please, Mr. Lostman
. Penalty Life
. Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up!
. Runners High
. Little Busters
. My Foot
. Smile
. Happy Bivouac
. Moon Gold
. OOPArts
. Pied Piper

17. Trial
18. Stroll and Roll
19. Nook in the Brain
20. Rebroadcast

21. Moondust
22. Horn Again



Okay, okay, where to start....
Let's go back... summer night, 2007 or something, last years of High School... scent of blooming plants, a starry night... bike trip after fitness... White Incarnation: Sitting on a Paper Moon, Good Night, Tonight, Our Hailey's Comet, She's my Sister... (and Tiny Boat too).. it was magical. And it still is! Sitting on a Paper Moon was the first song that clicked on yesterday, on a bike ride to a friend's... I was surprised it (still) sounded so good. I don't have many albums, but I own this one... the cover art is gorgeous. The little texts inside are cute.

He follows a plane when he's happy,
rains when he's sad, covers the sun when
he's jealous and thunders when he's mad.
He might disappear with no reason.
But you never get tired of watching him.

And I never get tired listening to WI. 'Tonight' is my personal favorite on the album. The album is just so sparkling, jangly, light(-hearted)... aaaaawww. Anyway. So that's my number one.

For all the other albums... well, they are okay... hahaha... but seriously, I am NOT an album-listener at all. I just do shuffle, shuffle and random shuffle.. but WI, I can appreciate as an album AND as loose songs.

Living Field is second and not first, because... well WI is there, but even if WI did not exist.. LF would not be so distinctly number one for me as is WI... LF and Kool Spice.. are REALLY close to each other... they can switch almost any time. TYMT is also in this category.. but then with a totally different sound. Without Shiroi Natsu (and Winoa) it would drop to place 9 approx. Shiroi Natsu is just one of my all-time favorite songs. [...]

And then yes, yes... PML, HB, and LB... it just does not do so much magic to me. Yup, currently I have 0 songs of these albums on my walkman. (I have 33 pillows songs on it.. of which 5 of WI, 4 of LF, 3 of Smile and Penalty Life, 2 of Kool Spice, TYMT, My Foot and Good Dreams...).

Please do not hate me for having YOUR holy trinity at a low place currently. This is just my honest opinion without any group pressure

edit: made some changes. Most remarkable is Moon Gold... I underrated it. I listened to it again, and it is not so bad as I had it in my memory, it's actually quite pleasant... in some ways similar to WI.
edit 2: Penalty Life rocks!

[quote="Ashinow"]
[b]11.[/b] Little Busters
[b]12.[/b] Please, Mr. Lostman
[b]13.[/b] Happy Bivouac[/quote]

Ballsy

[quote="Mafu"][quote="MyFoot"]Ooparts is really more of an abortion (crass, sorry) more than anything. I'm not sure why it's considered a studio album when it's more of a "lost tracks and rarities compilation" that no one wanted or deserved.

I jest...[/quote]
No it isn't. "[b]O[/b]ut [b]o[/b]f [b]p[/b]lace [b]art[/b]ifact[b]s[/b]" is simply just a title. It's a regular studio album just like the other 21.[/quote]

Well...that's disappointing....I always gave it a pass based on the fact that I figured it was an afterthought, trying to finish song ideas from yore. The fact that it was a concerted effort is

I invite all of you to explain your love for Happy Bivouac (through a song by song review),
because I don't really get why it is ranked so high.
(I love Carnival... but there it kinda stops)

[quote="Ashinow"]I invite all of you to explain your love for Happy Bivouac (through a song by song review),
because I don't really get why it is ranked so high.
(I love Carnival... but there it kinda stops)[/quote]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8164

I mean if you [i]really[/i] want me to get into it i'm more than happy to, but it's not like you're gonna change your mind. Talking about a guy who put [i]Penalty Life and Wake Up![/i] above Please Mr. Lostman and Happy Bivouac. But hey if that's your thing, awesome.

[quote="Ashinow"]I invite all of you to explain your love for Happy Bivouac (through a song by song review),
because I don't really get why it is ranked so high.
(I love Carnival... but there it kinda stops)[/quote]

Literally every song is amazing until Advice (the last song), but that's more one of those engrish quirky songs anyway. Still gets you pumped.

[quote="Spike"][quote="Ashinow"]I invite all of you to explain your love for Happy Bivouac (through a song by song review),
because I don't really get why it is ranked so high.
(I love Carnival... but there it kinda stops)[/quote]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8164

I mean if you [i]really[/i] want me to get into it i'm more than happy to, but it's not like you're gonna change your mind. Talking about a guy who put [i]Penalty Life and Wake Up![/i] above Please Mr. Lostman and Happy Bivouac. But hey if that's your thing, awesome.[/quote]

Thanks for the link. I've read it. It is true that I will probably not change my mind. However, that is not where I'm coming from. Instead of enforcing the dichotomy, I am trying to get some more understanding... and I just love to hear people talk/write passionately about the pillows' music. So yes, I'd really like you to get into it. It is just interesting to try to see things from a different perspectives... there is no 'good' or 'bad' here... (for me), just a different kind of good pillows experience

Woah, woah, REQUESTING someone share their thoughts without telling them that they're wrong or throwing shade at the album or somethin'?

Slow down, crazy roller, that's a bit much!

I'll have my tiers worked out by the weekend, I think. Been listening through a bunch of albums to refresh my current thoughts on things. Just prepping for making this list has been fun, cool thread.

Awesome, I can't wait to hear everyone else's lists!

Before I answer your questions Ash, I'd like to ask you this: Why do you rank GD and WUx3 above three of the most highly loved albums? I'm just curious, because in my opinion, the writing on PML alone is vastly superior to anything on those two albums. I just want to know your reasoning for liking those later albums better and what magic you think those three albums lack. I think it's an interesting opinion that is pretty rare among us hardcore fans, so I'd love to hear more about it.

In any case, I think it's interesting that you rank the 2nd Movement higher than anything else. That's pretty rare to see, and I'd venture it's the same among the Japanese audience. I think a lot of the stuff found on WI can be considered "2nd Movement" style, especially Tonight. By the way, I think Mafu or someone about a year back put up a list of which songs Kenji had written on MG and WI. i can't find the post. Would anyone mind posting that info here for reference's sake? I'm curious to see if Ash like Sawao's songs more, or Kenji's song more.

But back to the 2nd Movement, there's great stuff there, I guess I just can't rank it as high as HB and LB because I love that style of music more than the jazzy stuff Sawao was experimenting with during that era. As I mentioned in that thread that Spike linked to:

[quote]I was just starting to form my musical opinions, just barely getting into stuff like Weezer. But Weezer didn't hit me as hard as the pillows did. Kim Deal was also on that 17 song mix tape, as was Curly Rudy. My hunger became insatiable. I still remember laying on the couch on Friday nights after midnight, not able to go to sleep because I just HAD TO put my headphones on and listen to these songs again. Once I got the rest of the album with songs like Rush and the full Beautiful Morning With You, I was hooked on the album. I still rank Crazy Sunshine as my second favorite song by the band ever, and I consider myself so lucky to have seen them play it live twice in 2005 and 2006. This album definitely left a mark on my life, and while I wouldn't say it's perfect, I will concede it is damn near perfection.[/quote]

HB pretty much formed my musical tastes, in a sense. I love quirky, crunchy, melodic stuff like Weezer, Dinosaur Jr., Built to Spill, Oasis, the Pixies, The Breeders, et. al. That's the sound I fell in love with and I think Sawao perfectly crafted the stuff we see on LB-HB. I can go more in depth with this too if you press me for specifics or something on another tangent.

[quote="Son Goshin"]By the way, I think Mafu or someone about a year back put up a list of which songs Kenji had written on MG and WI. i can't find the post. Would anyone mind posting that info here for reference's sake? I'm curious to see if Ash like Sawao's songs more, or Kenji's song more.[/quote]
-Pantomime
夢のような約束は… (music by Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)

-90's my life
透きとおる遠い手紙 (music by Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)

-MOON GOLD
I Need Somebody (music by Sawao and Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)
雨にうたえば (music by Sawao and Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)
あそこへ帰りたい (music and lyrics by Kenji)
さようなら第三惑星 (music by Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)

-White Incarnation
カラフル・パンプキン・フィールズ (music by Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)
ペーパームーンにこしかけて (music by Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)
このままここで (music by Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)
ブルーマーチ (music by Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)
GOOD NIGHT (music by Kenji, lyrics by Sawao)

-BOOTLEG the pillows 1992-1993
クーパーのポスター (music by Kenji and Sawao, lyrics by Sawao)

1)Living Field
2)White Incarnation
3)Please, Mr. Lostman
4)Thank You My Twilight

5)Little Busters
6)Runners High
7)Happy Bivouac

Kool Spice
9)Smile

10)My Foot
11)Moon Gold
12)Good Dreams
13)Penalty Life

14)Wake Up!
15)Pied Piper
16)Trial

17)Horn Again
18)Moondust

19)Ooparts
20)Nook in the Brain
21)Stroll and Roll

Okay, so I'm not going to be ranking my preferences with numbers. I'll do three tiers - essential albums as of this moment in my life (top 5), frequent rotation, and albums I don't listen to as much right now. For me, I really do love various songs and aspects of each and every album in that second tier in a way that made it too hard for me to separate that group out further. Especially when I listened to the albums out of chronological order lately to try and make this list, I realized how much each album has its own identity to me. I really don't think there are any bad albums to my personal taste on here, but I definitely listen to Moon Gold and WI a lot less than the rest of the albums due to the production - there are certain guitar and drum sounds that I'm really drawn to, and those ones are a bit too sparkly for my taste, as much as I love the songs.

Onwards! Each group is chronological by release date, I honestly can't assign numbers or separate these out further.

EDIT: I separated it out, but only based on "top 5, listening often these days, listening occasionally atm, haven't listened too much in a while." I tend to only really get into bands whose full body of work is enjoyable to me, and then I get obsessively into enjoying each separate album for its nuances and differences...maybe I would do better ranking bands rather than albums.

KOOL SPICE
Please Mr. Lostman
LITTLE BUSTERS
Thank you, my twilight
NOOK IN THE BRAIN

RUNNERS HIGH
HAPPY BIVOUAC
Smile
PENALTY LIFE
PIED PIPER
HORN AGAIN
TRIAL
STROLL AND ROLL

LIVING FIELD
GOOD DREAMS
MY FOOT
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
OOPARTS
ムーンダスト

MOON GOLD
WHITE INCARNATION

edit: double post, hold my beer.